


At Pharsalus

by jouissant



Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Facials, Hate Sex, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:21:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24074377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: He ought to be satisfied. Caesar is victorious, against all odds. Antony is drunk, and well-fed, and he might have a woman easily. And yet he is not satisfied.
Relationships: Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57





	At Pharsalus

**Author's Note:**

> set during s01e7 "Pharsalus"

Here are the sounds of victory, thinks Antony: men loud with drink and sex, shouts and moans that issue from the tents around him to herald vanquishing of another sort. Above the camp is a persistent whine of wind and on it, he imagines, the cries of Pompey’s dead. He hears them whisper in his ear as he stalks the perimeter. He has heard their like before and remains unperturbed, for they are but specters, still insistent on life, and he knows they will winnow in volume as they depart for the underworld.

He ought to be satisfied. Caesar is victorious, against all odds. Antony is drunk, and well-fed, and he might have a woman easily. And yet he is not satisfied. He would sleep, but he knows he can’t. He would pass among the legion in hopes their good humor would rouse him, but he has been too long in Rome and they do not know him as they did. So he walks about the camp, and listens. He walks out of dissatisfaction altogether and into a dangerous mood, and once he feels this roil inside him Antony knows exactly where he will go. 

There is a little room off Caesar’s tent all draped and gilded. A light burns within, as Antony knew it would. He slips inside the curtained doorway without announcement, and when he enters he feels all softness go out of the air, though there was precious little to begin with. The man who occupies this room is soft, sure, but only in the manner of porridge. 

“A fine hutch Caesar has made for his rabbit,” Antony says. 

“Get out.” 

Brutus’s voice is thick with wine and tears. He faces the low fire; as Antony draws nearer he can see he sits doubled over on the cot, hugging himself as if in some great pain. 

“I don’t know what’s worse,” says Antony. “That he did not kill you or that you’re so broken up about it you can’t even enjoy yourself.” 

Brutus smacks the cot. “Leave me.” 

Antony tuts. “How easily you find your noble footing. Only you are very far from home, Brutus. In case you hadn’t noticed.” 

“Gods,” says Brutus. “I have slept rough. I have had filth beneath my nails for months. I have been in this same rank sweat. How could I fail to notice?” 

“Uncomfortable, soldiering. One grows used to it. Though I cannot say I have grown much accustomed to surrender.” 

Brutus gives a bitter laugh. “No,” he says. “You wouldn’t have.” 

He gazes into the firelight. His long features seem to stretch and hollow. There is a rime of dirt at the nape of his neck, along his cheek. He looks inept, a green child caught wandering. Antony feels a rush of bile to see him sitting so, head bowed, penitent. Yelping at Caesar’s ankles. 

“Did you think he’d kill you?” 

Brutus swallows. “I did not know.” 

“But you wanted it. Perhaps you wished to be slain by Caesar as Pompey slew your father.” 

“Do not speak of my father, Mark Antony.” 

Antony smiles luxuriantly. He knows how to say a thousand words with a smile, how to win wars, how to cut a man’s throat. How to give the sort of comfort that feels like fingering a wound. He crowds closer to Brutus on his cot. He reaches for him, plays knuckles over his cheekbone. Brutus flinches and jerks away. Antony chuckles. He thinks again of comfort, of how an injured man may bear himself upright until given leave to collapse. He would see Brutus collapse now, if only for Antony’s own amusement. 

“Marcus Junius Brutus,” he says, voice pitched soft and low. He touches Brutus again, runs his fingers gently over close-cropped hair crispy with grime. “Are you not tired? You have journeyed so long, only to turn tail and go back the way you came.” 

There is a pause, a freezing, as the words strike home. Then Brutus gasps. He reels from Antony’s hand, wars with a sob and loses. Antony groans. The sight and sound of Brutus thus undone sets Antony’s pulse drumming surer than any whore’s cunt. Surer, regrettably, than any cunt at all. He draws his cock out, palms himself, makes no secret of it to either of them. They both know this is why he’s come. 

Presently Brutus calms. He looks on, sniffling. Some light has gone out of his face, and he watches Antony not with the disdain or disinterest Antony might have expected but with no expression at all. But he does watch him. His eyes do not stray from Antony’s cock save the moment Antony offers his palm on impulse. Then, Brutus meets his gaze with eyes like wet flint and leans in close to spit. 

Antony makes short work of it, hunched there beside Brutus in the tent. There is no sound but a lusty percussion, slap of flesh, snap of his breath and of Brutus’s, which comes faster in time as though he too is nearing some conclusion. He frowns, brows drawn together, and Antony thinks ridiculously of his nose, how his nostrils flare when he’s angry, how angry he is now. As Antony’s hand moves faster and pleasure coils and tightens in his guts he can see that Brutus’s eyes have lost focus, that his sour mouth is moving, that he is mumbling something Antony cannot make out. Thanks, perhaps, for his miserable life, which had never been in question at all. 

“You were always to be taken alive.” 

Brutus looks at him, clear-eyed once more. “What?” 

“He gave me—an order.” 

Antony’s hand flies. Damned Brutus, making him think of fucking saving him, when he would see him splayed, see that knock-kneed colt’s body opened, flyblown—

He shudders, staggers forward, grabs Brutus about the shoulder. He means to force him but Brutus comes willingly, turns his face up. He knows what Antony means to do. He moans once then slackens his face like a good stoic, makes himself a thing for Antony, makes himself not dead but still, so still and quiet—

Pleasure hooks Antony, draws up tight inside him. He comes over Brutus’s face in great drops, Brutus who is beatific, who is livid, who has his own legs spread wide now on the cot, one hand pressed hard between them. He moans again, turns his head into Antony’s arm braced on his shoulder. He rubs like a cat, and laughs when Antony curses at the mess, and he chokes on this laugh as he comes.

After, Antony watches Brutus scrub at his face and hair with a cloth. He is ineffectual, and his hair stands at strange angles. When Antony goes he will call for a slave, for water. He will cleanse himself of all the soil of Greece, will go back to Rome made new again, and Caesar’s. 

“Would you have obeyed him?” Brutus asks. “Had you captured me on the field of battle.” 

Antony snorts. “You passed the battle huddled in a tent just like this one. But worse, because it was Pompey’s.” 

“Answer the question.” For a moment Brutus looks young again. Not lost, as before, but careless, as though he has forgotten who Antony is. 

“We are allies again, friend Brutus.” 

“Answer.” 

“I’d have let you run on my sword, had you begged me for it. But only had you begged.”

Brutus either misses the innuendo or ignores it altogether. He looks pensive. This sits ill with Antony, unsettles him, though he does not know why. Perhaps he was unsettled to begin with. He needs more wine, more food. He needs more softness after all. A peach, not porridge. 

He is gone into the night before Brutus can lay eyes on him again, and in the morning rides ahead of him to the coast, and thinks of nothing.


End file.
